Friday, May 23, 2014

Daniel Ksepka is the Bruce Museum's new Curator of Science. He begins in June.Photo Credit: Contributed

GREENWICH, Conn., -- Daniel Ksepka, an expert in the fossil records
of penguins, will join Greenwich's Bruce Museum as its newest Curator of
Science in June.

“We are delighted that Daniel Ksepka is joining the curatorial staff
at the Bruce,” says Peter C. Sutton, executive director of the Bruce
Museum. “Daniel comes to us not only with a vast body of knowledge but
also with a great deal of creativity and enthusiasm. He is already
planning some exciting new science exhibitions for the Museum.” Ksepka earned his doctorate in earth and environmental sciences from
Columbia University in 2007. He spent five years in residence at the
American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he performed his
dissertation research on the fossil record of penguins and gained broad
experience in the curation and study of natural history objects,
including fossils, skeletal materials, skins and geological specimens.

"Penguins are 10 times older than humans and have been here for a
very, very long time," said Ksepka, who has researched the evolution of
penguins and how they came to inhabit the African continent. Because penguins have been around for 60 million years, they have an extensive fossil record, he wrote at the American Scientist.
(Watch the video above as Ksepka goes into depth about how his research
pieces together the evolutionary puzzle of penguins and other related
bird species.)

Ksepka recently contributed to several important museum exhibitions,
including the traveling Race to the End of the Earth and Mythical Beasts
exhibitions at the American Museum of Natural History and the Polar
Palooza special exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Natural
Sciences.

His background includes work in science education, an important
aspect of the Bruce Museum’s exhibition programs. Ksepka has a long
track record of collaborating with K-12 educators, including designing
science content, presenting formal professional development talks for
science teachers, and designing workshops for teaching special topics in
geology, biology and paleontology.

Ksepka has been a featured speaker at the Nature Research Center at
the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, the Carnegie Museum of
Natural History and the Field Museum. In addition to more than 30 formal
peer-reviewed research papers, he has written articles for popular
science magazines, including Scientific American, American Scientist,
and Dig. Even his personal blog, “March of the Fossil Penguins,” attracts more than 50,000 visitors per year.

Ksepka joins the Bruce Museum from the National Evolutionary
Synthesis Center in North Carolina, where he served as a postdoctoral
researcher, and retains associate positions at the Field Museum, the
Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, and the
North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.